Caledonia Argus

Invitation to a wedding, robbery in Spring Grove

Posted: 7/9/02

Ye Olde Opera House is looking for you to come and enjoy a great show at the barn on July 18, 19 20, 21 at 8:30 pm.

Robber Bridegroom is a musical comedy about first impressions, love at first sight, and how fate plays games in love and marriage. And in the end of our Robber Bridegroom, fate makes even marriage work out perfectly, if not exactly honorably.

Jamie Lockhart, a dashing young southern gentleman (Rob Gross) makes his money any which way he can. Like any superhero/villain, he has another identity, the Bandit of the Woods. He steals from the rich and the poor, but only takes what he has truly earned through honest old time theivin!. Since this is a musical, he must fall in love with an incomparable beauty, Rosamund (Anna Booman) ìwho could make the moon burn like the sunî, and would rather ìrun home nakedî when Jamie steals her dress than perish to save her honor.
Rosamund is the spittiní image of her natural mother, (now dead), but mourned for constantly by her wealthy father, who has remarried in spite of himself ìa scrawny, greedy woman with buzzards eyes and crocodile jawsî named Salome (Tami Rae Weiss,) who lusts after every man she knows.

Salome pays a boy named Goat (Dave Arends) to do away with her stepdaughter Rosamund to keep all the familyís fortune for herself. But her plans are cut short by Little Harp known as ìthe most gruesome (and smelly) robber on the Natchez Trace,î the original trail down the Mississippi River into New Orleans.

Little Harp (Bill Fried) in contrast to the noble Jamie Lockhart, would even steal his own brotherís head from the chopping block. But his brotherís head donít mind none, heís still the brains of the outfit.

Robber Bridegroom has some of the greatest characters ever conceived in a musical comedy. ìA gent and a robber all in one, a girl who made the moon burn like the sun, a greedy witch, a man (so) rich, a brain that big, a filthy pig, a talking headî and the hotel bed where it all began.

The script contrasts the Southern values of old money and ìGone With The Windî respectability to the true worth of love and integrity. It is ìThe Moulin Rougeî set on the banks of the Mississippi, with bluegrass music and lyrics by Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman.

A taller tale has never been told at Ye Olde Gray Barn, and the cast of thirty talented voices from all over SE Minnesota and four professional bluegrass musicians (Jeroen van Tyn, Tom Hasvold, Mike McAbee, and Steve Smith) funded in part by the SE Minnesota Arts Council, Inc. and the Minnesota Legislature will make you fall in love with this musical from the first verse to the very last note.

Tickets are available at 507-498-5859 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm daily. Curtain is 8:30 pm on July 18, 19, 20, 21 at Ye Olde Gray Barn in Spring Grove. If you arrive at the show early, Mississippi Meals are available a la carte for a reasonable price under the tent on the Green beginning at 6:30 pm nightly.

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